Have a will to learn
And be your best
Possess a can do attitude
Always show your gratitude
Be at the top of your class
Continue to shine
Shout it out loud
Get that piece of paper and make your parents proud

My heart feels ache
For souls I hardly knew
Our boundaries we had to break
In order to see our hearts grew
Into orchards of Cherry Blossoms

Never have we before taken this journey
To have the chance to cut through
The social stigma our lands placed
On a country know for the power of its army
Regardless of the Problems
We Faced

Our adventure knew pure excitement
and Serenity
Even in our darkest hour
Many were surprised I was one of enlightenment
Which only makes the essence of my identity
Much deeper

This power
We feel sheds tears
To Allow for Magnolias to Grow and Wave
For a Chinese Goodbye
In hopes we meet again
When the tree has grow

Bound for lands far in the East
Never have our hands touched
Our eyes barely knew each other
Only a couple of us knew another's name
Fewer recognized our voices

In its Land of Power
As we wandered the grounds
Of a city hoping to earn the winter 5 Rings
We knew joy
We knew laughter
We knew beauty
Unlike what our home lands held

But in our final hours in the city of Beijing
A poison seeped into our morning feast
Which quickly took its toll
A few thousand feet in the Air
As we fell into the city of Western Peace

Our plans became shattered
Few of us barely survived
As our own bodies lost control
We were at the mercy of our own insides

Somehow the two state namesakes were the Worst

Taken to the hospital
If it were not for the group mothers and guides
We would have been among the dead
We saw rolled in front of us
As our medicine was entering our blood
Through needles in our hands

In the midst of what we've come to call
The Xi'an Incident
I saw a glimmer of a rare soul
One full of kindness
Intelligence
And freedom
A type of rare Golden Soul I've come to admire
That lied within the body of the other state

My actions may have been interpreted as
The essence of the White Snake
On some level, maybe it was
But in truth
My gift from Shanghai
To whisper an appropriate goodbye
Was to thank her for pushing me along when times were rough

I am thankful for all that were with me on that trip
And I do hope to see her, and everyone again.

Like I told her in a note I left,
Maybe Hoopa will help make sure
We meet again

A simple sample of a symbol used to approve the work of another.
But who was first to fist the quill and downward pull and upward ping?
Mr Tick of Tuscany?  Mrs Tick of Tijuana?  Or master Tick the ticklers son who tagged his type with ticking fun?
The actual answer is I'm sure a bore and a slip of the tip made the tick a score.

Fukushima Daiichi

You told us about the samurai ***** that day,
why the child-emperor drowned, how folklore affected the shore.
The thinnest male I’d ever seen pulled out a blunt and smoked.
Everyone else focused on you, Kasa Professor,
but I trailed over the class with his breath, kept
my eyes on the clipboard you passed around, “For
relief efforts.” You never spoke. Only explained.
As an English major, I knew you would be an exclamation mark.
As an English major in the History of the Samurai, I didn’t know you would be studying the I.R.S.
The swords were scarier than the men, yet their ghosts were on a crab’s back.
I imagine my ghost as cigarette smoke flogging over an enamored classroom until I leave – only glancing back when the clipboard is returned.
We both knew it would be empty.
We both admitted it when we smelt the smoke.
The sinking ship already burned, and your dying wave is the confusion behind betrayal of a tradition to quench approaching starvation.
That final bite – the moment we are full – is where all history is lost. In the future, they will wonder where the ***** came from. But I won’t wonder about you.
You are not an exclamation mark. You were a question mark all along. But a mark, nonetheless.